The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 34

The sheriff awkwardly seized her small hand, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, miss," he said. "I know the Senator well."

Curtis turned to Jennie, who came forward--"And this is my sister."

"I've heard of you," the sheriff said, regaining his self-possession.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, ladies--"

Elsie looked at him and quietly said: "I hope you will not be hasty, sheriff; my father will not sanction violence."

"You're being here makes a difference, miss--of course--I--"

Jennie spoke up: "You must be hungry, Mr. Sheriff," she said, and smiling up at Calvin, added, "and so are your men. Why not picket your horses and have some lunch with us?"

Curtis took advantage of the hesitation. "That's the reasonable thing, men. We can discuss measures at our ease."

The cowboys looked at each other with significant glances. Several began to dust themselves and to slyly swab their faces with their gay kerchiefs, and one or two became noticeably redder about the ears as they looked down at their horses' bridles.

Calvin broke the silence. "I don't let this chance slip, boys. I'm powerful keen, myself."

"So'm I," echoed several others.

The sheriff coughed. "Well--really--I'm agreeable, but I'm afeerd it'll be a powerful sight o' trouble, miss."

"Oh no, let us attend to that," cried Jennie. "We shall expect you in fifteen minutes," and taking Elsie by the arm, she started across the road.

As the cowboys followed the graceful retreating figures of the girls, Lawson and Curtis looked at each other with eyes of amazement; Lawson acknowledged a mighty impulse to laugh. "How unmilitary," he muttered.

"But how effective," replied Curtis, his lips twitching.

The cowboys muttered among themselves. "Say, is this a dream?"

"Who said pork-and-beans?"

"Does my necktie kiver my collar-b.u.t.ton?" asked a third.

"Come, boys!" called Curtis, cheerily. "While the sheriff and I have a little set-to, you water your ponies and dust off, and be ready for cold potatoes. You're a little late for a square meal, but I think we can ease your pangs."

With a patter of jocose remarks the cowboys rode off down towards the creek, taking the sheriff's horse along with them.

Curtis turned to Lawson. "I wish you'd bring that code over to the house, Lawson. I want to show that special clause to the sheriff."

Turning to Winters, he said: "Come, let's go across to my library and talk our differences over in comfort."

The sheriff dusted his trousers with the broad of his hand. "Well, now, I'm in no condition to sit down with ladies."

"I'll give you a chance to clean up," replied Curtis, who plainly saw that the girls had the rough bordermen "on the ice and going," as Calvin would say. A man can brag and swear and bl.u.s.ter out of doors, or in a bare, tobacco-stained office; but in a library, surrounded by books, in the hearing of ladies, he is more human--more reasonable. Jennie's invitation had turned impending defeat to victory.

Curtis took Winters into his own bedroom and put its toilet articles at his service and left him. As the sheriff came out into the Captain's library five minutes later, it was plain he had washed away a large part of his ferocity; his hair, plastered down smooth, represented the change in his mental condition--his quills were laid. He was, in fact, fairly meek.

Curtis confidentially remarked, in a low voice: "You see, sheriff, we must manage this thing quietly. We mustn't endanger these women, and especially Miss Brisbane. If the old Senator gets a notion his daughter is in danger--"

Winters blew a whiff. "Great G.o.d, he'd tear the State wide open! No, the boys were too hasty. As I say, I saw the irregularity, but if I hadn't consented to lead a posse in here that whole inquest would have come a-rampin' down on ye. I said to 'em, 'Boys,' I says, 'you can't do that kind of thing,' I says. 'These Tetongs are fighters,' I says, 'and you'll have a sweet time chasin' 'em over the hills--just go slow and learn to peddle,' I says--"

Lawson, entering with the code, cut him short in his shameless exculpation, and Curtis said, suavely: "Mr. Winters, I think you know Mr. Lawson."

"We've crossed each other's trail once or twice, I believe," said Lawson. "Here is the clause."

Curtis laid the book before the sheriff, who pushed a stubby forefinger against the letters and read the paragraph laboriously. His thick wits were moved by it, and he said: "Seems a clear case, and yet the reservation is included in the lines of Pinon County. 'Pears like the county'd ought 'o have some rights."

"Well, here comes the posse," said Curtis; "we'll talk it all over with them after lunch. Come in, boys!" he called cheerily to the straggling herders, who came in sheepishly, one by one, their spurs rattling, their big, limp hats twisted in their hands. They had pounded the alkali from each other's s.h.i.+rt, and their red faces shone with the determined rubbing they had received. All the wild grace of their horsemans.h.i.+p was gone, and as they sidled in and squatted down along the wall they were anything but ferocious in manner or speech.

"Ah, now, this is all right," each man said, when Curtis offered chairs.

"You take the chair, Jim; you take it, Joe--this suits me."

Lawson was interested in their cranial development, and their alignment along the wall gave a fine opportunity for comparison. "They were, for the most part, shapeless and of small capacity," he said afterwards--"just country b.u.mpkins, trained to the horse and the revolver, but each of them arrogated to himself the judicial mind of the Almighty Creator."

The sheriff, leaning far back in the big Morris chair, wore a smirking smile which seemed to say: "Boys, I'm onto this luxury all right.

Stuffed chair don't get me no back-ache. Nothing's too rich for _my_ blood--if I can get it."

The young fellows were transfixed with awe of Calvin, for, though the last to enter the house, he walked calmly past the library door on into the dining-room, and a moment later could be heard chatting with the girls, "sa.s.sy as a whiskey-jack."

One big, freckled young fellow nudged his neighbor and said: "Wouldn't that pull your teeth? That wall-eyed sorrel has waltzed right into the kitchen to buzz the women. Say, his neck needs shortening."

"Does he stand in, or is it just gall?"

"It's nerve--nothing else. We ain't onto our job, that's all."

"Oh, he knows 'em all right. I heered he stands in with the agent's sister."

"The h.e.l.l he does! Lookin' that way? Well, I don't think. It's his bra.s.s-bound cheek. Wait till we ketch him alone."

Cal appeared at the door. "Well, fellers, come in; grub's all spread out."

"What you got to say about it?" asked Green.

"Think you're the n.i.g.g.e.r that rings the bell, don't ye?" remarked Galvin. "We're waitin' for the boss to say 'when.'"

Not one of them stirred till Curtis rose, saying to the sheriff, "Well, we'll take time later to discuss that; come right out and tame the wolf."

The fact that Curtis accepted Calvin's call impressed the crowd deeply.

"You'd think he was one o' the fambly," muttered Galvin. "Wait till we get a rope 'round his neck."

The table, looking cool and dainty in its fleckless linen, was set with plates of cold chicken and ham, with pots of jelly and white bread at each end of the cloth, beside big pitchers of cool milk. To the cowboys, accustomed only to their rude camps and the crude housekeeping of the settlers round about, this dainty cleanliness of dining-room was marvellously subduing. They shuffled into their seats noisily, with only swift, animal-like glances at the girls, who were bubbling over with the excitement of feeding this band of Cossacks.

As they drank their milk and fed great slices of bread and jelly into their mouths, fighting Indians seemed less necessary than they had supposed. Whiskey and alkali dust, and the smell of sweating ponies, were all forgotten in the quiet and sweetness of this pretty home. The soft answer had turned wrath into shamefaced wonder and awkward courtesy.

Curtis, sitting at the head of the board as host, plied the sheriff with cold chicken, discussing meanwhile the difficulties under which the Tetongs labored, and drew from that sorely beleaguered officer admissions which he afterwards regretted. "That's so, I don't know as I'd do any better in their places, but--"

Jennie, with a keen perception of her power over her guests, went from one to the other, inquiring, in her sweetest voice: "Won't _you_ have another slice of bread? Please do!"